UrbnEnv

field trip report 3

2006-04-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

East of Temple Campus
Even though Philadelphia used to be a big hat city, all I saw was newly constructed projrct housings and abandoned old brick buildings several blocks away from the campus. As a wave of industrialization ceased, Philadelphia lost its activity (soft) but left the enclosure (hard). The area we expored is right in the transition.
These are pictures and descriptions that will tell pieces of industrialization which still can be found on the site.

1: Kardon Building
High ceiling, luxuary condos and studios apts for Temple students. This used to be a warehouse, but it nicely passed over to a student apartment.

2: PGW

PGW stands right off Temple campus, making a strong edge between the campus and the east side of it.

3: East side of Temple Campus Regional Rail Station

This is also an element that creates an edge between the campus and the neighbor, and the parking lot(PGW's?) makes it wider.

4: Cousin's Market

An supermarket that cuts off Germantown Ave.

5: Green spot

Where vacant lots are are treated with greenery and murals.

6: White wall

On Germantown Ave. and Montgomery, white wall appears. In a contrast with old broken brick warehouses, the white is almost too bright.

7: Condos between abandoned buildings

An apartment building. Just like Kardon building, This used to be a sewing factory, and turned into spacious units. Each room has almost 20' high ceiling. The chell looks a typical warehouse, but inside is painted nicely. Mostly occupied by young generations.

8: Landfill landscapes

9: Developing project housings

The most active industry going on in the area would be project housing development. There are a buch of contractors working and signs saying "future site of...". After the scilence of post-industrialization, the area will be filled with peacefull suburban looking project housings.

field trip report 2

2006-04-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

West of Temple Campus
As we start walking toward the west, we find things are gradually changing. These are pictures and descriptions that shows the transition relating to helthscape of the area.

1: Wheelchair accessible subway entrance

On Broad and Cecil B. Moore, an elevator and an escalator help handicapped people. This is a basic element that gives each individual equal oppotunity to come schoo, no matter what physical condition is.

2: shops
Shops in front of IBC. helps Temple student grab breakfast on the way to classes. In daytime, it makes traffic congestion by people who try to park quick and get something to eat. Such a narrow street but high frequency of use has high risk of accident.

3: Vacant lot turning into a landfill

This open spot is not owned or maintained properly. Residential housings right on the back, might get suffered by it.

4: Clean paver in sidewalks

This can be found close to the campus where Temple shops are (meaning shops which aiming the students' consume)
5: Cracked sidewalk
These happen more further to the west, where you don't see Temple T anymore. Cracked pieces of glass are all over, and the surface is uneven. Dangerous, but this must mean Temple money did not reach this far.

6: Chinesefood
There are a couple of chinesefood places, indicates what the neighbor eats. A bunch of seefood restaurants and bars (closed and open) are there as well.

7: Maintained open spot
This remind me of the idea of Farmadelphia by FrontStudio (picture) . The best use of land which is not actively used will be greening. As well as it can stop the situation of 3, provide better water, fresh food, cleaner air, and direct agricultural education to children.

8: typical abandoned house

This is an example of abandoned house. Spoiled wood members, no windows. Construction materials are structurally and chemically dangerous when not maintained.

field trip report

2006-04-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

South of Temple campus
According to Wikipedia(www.wikipedia.org), Gentrification refers to the process whereby dilapidated neighborhoods are restored and refurbished, usually in conjunction with changing demographics and an influx of wealthier residents.
Even though it is clear that Temple has a large influence on, gentrification in this area is not caused only by Temple. Also, gentrification can happen in a house, in a city block, or the entire city. An investor(Temple can be this but possibly others), a reinforcer(the city could be this but possibly others), an agitator(neighbor or politician).
To view this situation objectively, I choose to show pictures and descriptions of elements that makes gentrification of this area.

1: Masters st. and 13th st. vs. Masters st. and Broad st.

The front and the back of the block have totally different characteristics. There is a school, and a senior center on Masters st. and 13th st. On Masters st. and Broad st., there is the school's wall that stands up right on its property line, looks like a prison with a cold surface and small high windows. There are homeless people sleeping on the built-in bench; the school certainly acts as a public facility.

2: Into your privacy

In ther residential area, houses are connected by cul de sac, keeping outsider away. The area is very quiet, nobody is out, creepy atmosphere at this time.

3: WIDE 13th street

Not only cul de sac, the EXTREME width of 13th street makes the area exclusive. Here I have fun riding my bike because it goes downhill as well. I guess the street is never needed to be that wide at all. It just becomes a speeding points for cars.

4: Jump into another worldTher new project area south of Girard is completely separated from the housings right south of the campus. They don't carry too much common materiality or style. It looks like more younger generations live in the new project area.

5: Live and death

An abandoned mall (?) to the left and the new projet to the back. A lot of commercial buildings which look like they used to prosper, are abandoned in this area, contrasting from the new houses.

6: Active spot

It is probably one of most active palce in the area. this tennis club has some interior and exterior court where children get chance to learn to play tennis.

7: From the east to the west

Land on west side of Broad street is much more oqqupied. Unlike 5,6, the houses are constantly innovated, to get them on sale.

8: A commercial intersection.

KFC, Checkers, McDonalds, Cash Checked place, clothings, glosary, gas station, and so on. Recently pavers were completed on sidewalks and devisions in the middle of Broad street. Subway station, bus, and trolly are actively used. A lot of people wait at this intersection to transfer, at the same time, there a lot of venders sell stuff on sidewalks.

9: The mall next to the campus

The mall of 50% occupancy, will lose more of their customers as new buildings are built around it. They will need to consider a good connection with the campus in order to not be killed by the others power.

10: The Edge

Sunshine from the west makes a huge shadow. Is the edge going to be a edge of the campus, or a wall between the neighbor and the campus?

Terminology

2006-03-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

Community Description

North Philadelphia’s reality- is 33% of decline in population(1970-80), 80%of residents in low-moderate income, 56% of residents living below the poverty level, 32% of residents unemployed, 94% of residents are Afro-American, 43% of houses having female as a head of household.
Urban ills- are high incarceration, drug trafficking, violent crime, low-skill level, health problems and low-esteem.
Urban transparency- is a condition that is not hidden by solid wall. Being able to see public spaces, to see people walking.
Incarceration- in prison

Lily Yeh, The Village of Arts & Humanities, Philadelphia, PA

Environmental Dilenma

Human security- is ideal components of human necessity; public security to health, food, and education and shelter
Subsidence- is he motion of a surface as it shifts downward relative to a datum such as sea-level.
Globalization- is the worldwide phenomenon of technological, economic, political and cultural exchanges, brought about by modern communication, transportation and legal infrastructure as well as the political choice to consciously open cross-border links in international trade and finance.
Monopoly- is a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a kind of product or service. Monopolies are characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods.
www.wikipedia.com

Community Map

Healthy environment- is good state of land or community, without any harmful factors like hazardous brownfield
Ethnic diversity- is the presence of a wide range of variation in ethnicity
Activation- is the process whereby something is prepared or excited for a subsequent reaction.
sinkhole- is The result is a depression in the surface topography.

Urban Juxtaposition

Segmentation- is the partitioning of one region into two or more regions.
positive urban landscape juxtaposition- is a state made of multiple things put together, something works out for the community
gentrification- is the process whereby a low rent neighborhood is transformed into a high rent neighborhood through redevelopment.
Temple Sun- is high power spot light fixtures set at top of buildings for security purposes

Horse and Carriage

Eco-gastronomy- is The Slow Food movement, against fast food, claims to preserve the cultural cuisine and the associated food plants and seeds, domestic animals, and farming within an ecoregion.
ecological foot-prints- is products that human left in natural environment.
Green movement- relies on the ideals of the larger ecology movement, peace movement, conservation movement, environmental movement and general trend towards environmentalism.

Brillembourg, Alfredo Informal City 2005 Caracas/New York
www.wikipedia.com

community description

2006-03-14T06:09:00.001-08:00

The community I chosen is The Village of Humanities and Arts, North Philadelphia, just 6 blocks north from the main campus. I have visited there for my projects and art programs to attend in the village. The Village distinguishes itself from the other parts of the area by the artworks; murals, tile work pathways, sculpture. Parks are decorated beautifully between 11th and Germantown Ave. and between Cumberland and Huntingdon Street of the neighborhood. The village has sets of after school programs including dance, craft, painting, and so on.

The Village of Humanities and Arts is a non-profit, community-based arts, community development, and educational organization. In 1986, the Village started when an artist Lily Yeh was invited by African-American dancer Arthur Hall to create a park. Since 1986, the village has worked with thousands of people from kids to adults to solve North Philadelphia’s reality which had drawn urban-ills into the community and to rebuild the environment.

They have joint programs with neighborhood schools, to learn and enjoy the arts together. The village has several fields where they cultivate vegetables and fruits annually and have a big meal together. I think the community definitely has succeeded in gathering the community member together. Kids have a lot of opportunities to communicate with different individuals and artist in the neighborhood. All the cleaning up works and maintenance works are done by volunteers, so as the programs. Recently concrete pavers for the main park were created by the community with a support of Temple architecture students. The park has bright color and cheerful images like angels and animals which were created directly by kids’ hands with the positive hope to the community. The parks are located in a way they can walk through city blocks instead of having housings and fences. By having circulation deep into the site, the community becomes active by the use of urban transparency. Right next to the main building of the village, there is an outside stage where kids can play theatres. Other educational facilities like a kinder garden and elementary schools are close to it, making it easier for kids to come and play.
To the north from the site along Germantown Avenue, there is a bunch of commercial/retail stores one next to another, forming a small shopping area. There is a bus stop and intersection of Lehigh Avenue and Germantown Avenue, which bring people from outside together with the village.

The second images are diagrams of the village showing positive facts and negative facts of the site. Positive facts are; rich greenery, geographical set up, community integrated buildings, frequent use of the parks and paths. Negative points are; not smooth circulation from outside especially from the north, dark at night, lack of space for sports activities.
Kids are running around outside in those parks. I am sure there have been incredible efforts to make a typical north Philadelphia community turned into such a park.

Village of arts and humanity

Environmental dilemma

2006-03-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

Environmental dilemma that I am interested in is the change in population, globalization, and urbanization worldwide and how they interact. As the world population is right on a spike of increasing, we have a lot of issues on limited non-reusable energy resources, immigration, sanitation, and health care.
Population is increasing in cities. In last 50 years, the number of population in cities of the world increased from 740 million to 2.9 billion. 1million people are in slums/barrios/shanties right now and will double by 2020(Brillembourg). For example, Caracas, Venezuela has the most of the population in the slum area. (img) Dhaka, Bangladesh will be another good example. Dhaka experienced average annual rate of 5% change of the urban population, mostly illegal. Both cities accept illegal immigrants who seek jobs and better life in slums than their poor life in rural homes.
Concentration in urban settings could be environmentally and geographically dangerous because the people will be easier to be suffered by natural disasters and easier to pollute nature or their selves can cause subsidence. Dhaka, Bangladesh experienced 22 flood disasters in 1990’s. According to Rahman, the number of floods in 90’s is the most ever in last several decades, indicating there has been a significant change in climate. As they have more floods than ever, scientist has started making the dynamic infrastructure, embankment debatable. It was to protect people and property from water, but building a gigantic wall in a most land changes natural quality and traditional habitats, which was largely reflected by natural environment including flooding. The city has become more populated and urbanized, with more and more tall buildings, but there is a doubt on such a temporary solution.
What about us? In the middle of capital world, aren’t we ignoring what is going around us? Aren’t we being lazy to take advantage of economical strength and technology? Even though we know it, we still consume cars for our individual efficiency and pollute air, not spending available money into public transportation. We have developed a huge network of trucking and trading system that producers can distribute their products to everywhere in the US and obtain products oversea. We buy houses in suburban for its comfort, even though it enforces the car society and non-ecological market. We should stop depending products manufactured or cultivated outside our own country. By selecting particular places to ask to manufacture products, we can cause unbalanced population and intense immigration.
Recognizing pursuing our economical success is not ideal, this is time to rethink how we live. We have picked our direction by looking at our benefit in the near future. We have done so many things for ourselves but not for people of other places and the future generation. We need to be careful about how our economy influences the rest of the world.

image: http://ecoportal3.tripod.com/yann-bertrand-foto-barrios-caracas.htm
Md Saeedur Rahman ‘The Daily Star Web Edition Vol.5 #640’ “How about dismantling the embankment?”
Brillembourg, Alfredo ‘Informal City’ 2005 Caracas/New York

Community map

2006-02-08T21:12:00.000-08:00

I consider "my community" to be a linear shape. Because I ride my bike on 19th street south to north to go work and school, places I stop are automatically located along the street. Even though the neighbor gets shady at night with a lot of people wandering around, it has a lot of positive potential for the future. In daytime, there are a lot of commuters come to the area, park their car, and go to school or work. The traffic at daytime is pretty bad because of it, but there is much lesser traffic at night. The first thing I like the neighborhood about is that the area is elevated so that we have great views of Center City from anywhere at all time. Also, that makes me happy when I ride my bike to Center City on downhill. Septa bus 33 runs 24 hours along 19th and 20th street, giving us direct access to Center City. Another exciting thing is that the trolley is back now on Girard Street. All that transportation system on Girard Street serves for people who comes from outside to places along the street, there are Girard Collage, St. Joseph Hospital, and many churches. The neighborhood is in a big change. More and more new construction, renovation is going on in almost every block in the area. I see the construction wave comes from the south of Fairmount Avenue, and now growing from the avenue toward the north to Girard Street. Once over Girard Street, the scenery changes at all. Lots of vacant lots, people wandering around, a lot of sinkholes, and trash on the ground. Other than that I would say the area is pretty healthy environment.
Commercial buildings are concentrated on Fairmount Avenue, and educational and community-service buildings are located on the Avenue as well. The concentration of the diverse use of buildings brought activation; the neighborhood always has people and kids playing outside, meaning that the area secured enough. We are having a future community residential complex right next to the park and the community center.
The museum area is expanding toward the north-east and hitting my neighbor. Most of the houses which have been there are occupied by black families, households usually of 2 or 3 generations. The new houses and recently renovated houses are now taken by other color of families, young students, bachelors, couples, and professionals, sometimes regular row houses converted into apartment houses, giving the are wider ethnic diversity. It is partially influenced by expanding Temple University. More Temple student want to or have to chose to spill out from the campus. Therefore, again, gentrification has occurred here. Our landlord said that rents in the area including ours are incresed because owners are expecting that future Temple students will be able to live at higher rent. The white line in the map on the left shows where the new movement encountering the existing neighborhood. __www.maps.google.com

Urban landscape juxtaposition

2006-02-01T21:12:00.000-08:00

North Philly Juxtaposition
Philadelphia used to thrive primarily on the steam locomotives especially Baldwin Locomotive Works, the world’s largest builder of steam locomotives, which grew with the Pennsylvania Railroad which used to be the largest railroad in the world. For other fields of industry, it was relatively easy to proceed in Philadelphia because of the great railroad system in the 19th century. Due to this history, the city has a lot of interesting elements that can be trace between the history and the new in juxtaposition today. Especially in North Philadelphia and North-East Philadelphia have a higher rate of vacancy and have still kept their old warehouses close to Delaware River and the railroads. In these years, Philadelphia has changed its diversity in segmentation and living situations; Philadelphians have seen many odd, interesting and fresh changes in North Philadelphia after a long depression.
The first picture shows old factory building on 9th and Girard street and Philadelphia Housing Project’s suburban-looking houses in the west side of the factory. I find this example odd, because the vision of the two different kinds of buildings is very ugly. The materiality of the new project housing itself is nice but is not traditional Philadelphia, and the randomness totally destroy the history and the atmosphere of North Philadelphia.
Warehouses which used to be occupied by manufacturing companies of the industrial revolution age, are now renovated and sold as fancy condos intensely in north-east Philadelphia, Northern Liberty. They have the look of brick warehouse from 19th century on the exterior. Huge investment is into the business of innovation, and brand new condos which follows warehouse-style all over Northern Liberty to get on the boom. It has created a movement of New Yorkers live into Philadelphia. Even though it’s causing gentrification over the area, this is a good example of positive urban landscape juxtaposition, because it creates healthy money into the society.
The two examples above create juxtaposition as well. As you travel along Girard street from 9th street to Front street, you will see a wide diversity of housing types, residence, and so on. I would say the east becoming much richer because of the boom of Northern liberty. The other part of Girard Street still contains a lot of vacancy, non-occupied buildings.
Temple University main campus in North Philadelphia has juxtaposition to its neighborhood. And I am not sure if this juxtaposition is positive or negative, because I do not know if the neighborhood is pleased about the expansion of Temple University which has occurred for years and years. Over years Temple University has taken over the huge area in North Philly by buying up the land and pushing off from the site. It physically cuts off from a side to the other side around the campus. Traffic has changed, due to the expanding enrollment. The view has been changed by tall buildings on campus. The dazzling light of security light "Temple Sun" almost blinds eyes at night.

Philadelphia in Focus: A Profile from Census 2000 This includes descriptions on changes in population and diversity.
Pictures www.philadelphiahomesonline.com/

Horse-Drawn Carriages in NYC

2006-02-01T18:59:00.001-08:00

There is a controversy over horse drawn carriages in NYC, since some fatal accidents related to the horses have happened over time. Most of the cases, a horse is spooked and run into a car, or drag riders. Some of the horses which caused accidents were ended their lives in euthanasia. To the series of the accidents, there are people who say "horses are not for today's urban setting, ban the horse-drawn carriages." Is it really the best way? I would say banning it is too selfish. Banning it is an easy solution for this issue because the horses are not responsible for this, but us. By banning it, we will ignore to solve deep-rooted problems that we have created over our history.
I have to admit that urbanization in NYC is still active at a rapid speed. It is obvious that the NYC's historically valuable horses are not coming along with the urbanization speed. But should we just pursue whatever benefits us? Do we really want streets packed with cars and land with full of buildings? That would be very selfish idea of human beings. We always need know what we changed as we proceed urbanism, what we are producing as by-products. Human beings have literally taken over the mother earth where all other animals used to share, occupy the land and put buildings, eat up resources, put animals in cages in zoos. What we should do to this problem is not to kill the horses, make a wide lane for horse-carriage, and make it wide enough so that it does not get spooked. At the same time NYC should be able to limit the number of cars for better air. Any city in the world should be capable to do this; be aware of the allegiance, because human beings are just borrowing some land on this earth.
This is a good time to look back what we did, and think what we can do to it. Urban life leaves tons of ecological foot-prints. Horse and carriage which has got the dirty ecological footprints on, should still run in NYC, because it reminds us that it was us who leaf the foot-prints.
Horse-carriage has potential other than just being tourist’s entertainment in the city. NYC could be a place to flip this issue into political movement; using it’s the characteristic of a birthplace of trends. It can push green movement. People who support trendy eco-gastronomy can insist how slow they want to live in NYC. It could be a slow-vehicle for people who are mentally and financially rich just like to enjoy slow-food.
Code of practice for horse drawn vehicles This might give you an idea of how the horses are operated.

Alexis Stewart: Ban horse-drawn carriages The article which made the horse and carriage issue widely seen.

PETA: City streets no place for a horse Another article from USA Today, there is an interesting opinion on possibility of accident comparing aircraft and horse-carriage on the bottom.